A woman who blackmailed Livia Stanciu (photo), the President of the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ), was detained by prosecutors with the National Anticorruption Directorate, judicial sources have told Agerpres.
The same sources have mentioned that the woman had worked professionally with Livia Stanciu’s deceased husband and that ICCJ head filed a complaint. The sources have said that the blackmail consisted in threatening with defamation, since she claimed that Stanciu’s husband allegedly owed her money and that would make that public in the press unless she receives EUR 20,000.
Prosecutors of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) have ordered defendant Mariana Rarinca be held for blackmail of the Supreme Court’s chair, to be brought before the Bucharest Tribunal for a 30-day arrest warrant. ‘April 2014 – June 3, 2014, defendant Mariana Rarinca threatened the injured party, the chair of the Supreme Court of Justice, she will disclose some imaginary misdeeds in order to get for herself some ill-gotten advantage. Moreover, the defendant threatened the injured party she would leak to a television channel compromising information about the party and her family, claiming that she possessed written documents and other kinds of evidence to support her accusations,’ DNA reports in a press release posted on Tuesday on DNA’s website.
DNA says that in a phone conversation, defendant Rarinca asked the injured party to give her EUR 20,000 in exchange for her silence over the so-called compromising information. In the said case, prosecutors receive specialist support from the Romanian Intelligence Service and the Special Intervention Brigade of the Gendarmerie.
Chair of the Supreme Court of Justice and Cassation Livia Stanciu on Tuesday said that the woman who used to blackmail her probably thought she would intimidate her and make her cave in by threatening with public scandal. She added that she does not know what or who made her take such an attitude, mentioning that the woman used to work at the office of her late husband.
‘She called me claiming that my husband was EUR 20,000 indebted to her. I certainly displayed full availability to clarify the situation, although I found it absurd after three and a half years. I asked her for more information about the amount. She claimed the money was for judiciary assistance contracts that were left unfulfilled as a result of the death of my husband. I once again insisted on her coming up with actual information,’ Stanciu explained before a meeting of the Superior Council of Magistracy on Tuesday. The judge also said she knew the blackmailer somehow, because that woman used to work at the office of her husband, adding that some years ago the woman was introduced to her husband as a single mom of two whose previous workplace was disbanded and who was in distress. She said she could not provide more details because the investigation is underway and she does not want to taint it.